Adult Nursing Students Research Articles

Self-disclosure in adult and mental health nursing students.

Self-disclosure, the process whereby people verbally reveal themselves to others, is an important interpersonal skill in initiating, developing, maintaining, and terminating therapeutic relationships. Studies of this interpersonal skill in nursing have, primarily, focused on adult nurses. They are dated, make no comparisons between this and other nursing specialisms, and have not considered the patient as a focus for nurses' self-disclosure. This study attempts to address these issues in relation to student nurses by: replicating a previous study of self-disclosure in adult nursing students (ANS) and offering a comparison of two nursing specialisms, reporting on the use of this skill in relation to the patient. A matched sample of 25 ANS and 25 mental health nursing students (MHNS) were asked to complete a modified version of Jourard's 25-item self-disclosure questionnaire. The findings suggest that: ANS were more self-disclosing than students sampled in an earlier study (Burnard and Morrison, 1992); both sets of students disclosed significantly less items to the patient as target-person than to other categories; and MHNS disclosed significantly more items than the ANS to the patient category.

Debate: a strategy for increasing interaction in audio teleconferencing.

Increased demand for audio teleconferenced undergraduate nursing courses for registered nurses in New Brunswick, Canada, has resulted in nurse educators being challenged to meet the needs of adult learners within the constraints of this technology. In this paper the problem of limited interaction among adult nursing students in a teleconferenced course is examined in light of the theoretical frameworks of adult education and distance education. The effects of implementing debate as a learning strategy to increase participation are discussed. The debate process increased site to site interaction and encouraged nurses to consider pragmatic issues from new perspectives.

Academic credit for experiential learning.

If the formal education process is to be relevant to adult nursing students, their life experience should be acknowledged. Of particular significance is determining how prior life experiences have produced outcomes in the adult nursing student equivalent to what is expected in the nursing education program. The author discusses how to assess experiential learning for academic credit.

Workshop way� in a B.S.N. completion degree course

WORKSHOP WAY® is a scientific educational system that does not leave human growth and academic achievement to chance. It organizes time, materials and strategies in ways that permit students to develop and maintain positive feelings as persons and learners, and to handle new material without fear of failure. It is used successfully in both elementary and secondary schools. This paper presents the application of WORKSHOP WAY at the University level, to a course for adult nursing students reentering the educational process. The philosophy and psychology, workshop orientation, structure of class time and assignments and evaluation are discussed in detail.